History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union

The history of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union ( Russian История Великой Отечественной войны Советского Союза 1941-1945 ) is one in the Soviet Union Resulting historiographical standard work on the German-Soviet War 1941-1945.

On September 17, 1957, the Central Committee of the CPSU had given the order and set up a large project group of archivists, historians and party officials. The total of six volumes appeared from 1960 to 1965. In the Soviet Union they - together with the twelve-volume "History of the Second World War" - formed the basis for the training of historians and history teachers, who in turn served as multipliers of their content.

The six volumes were translated into German in the GDR and appeared there from 1962 to 1968 by the Berlin military publishing house. The German editors made changes to the content and disguised this by specifying a fictitious, never-published Russian edition as the text template. Conflicts between East Berlin and Moscow over the deviations in content led to the decision in October 1962 that disputes over content should be clarified in Moscow.

Other Eastern Bloc states such as Poland and Czechoslovakia also translated the work into their national languages ​​in the 1960s.

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• Helmut Berding, Klaus Heller, Winfried Speitkamp: War and memory: case studies on the 19th and 20th centuries. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2000, ISBN 3-525-35423-1 .
• Siegfried Lokatis : The censorship of historical literature in the GDR under Ulbricht. In: Georg G. Iggers (ed.): The GDR historical science as a research problem. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-64426-2 .